You know how important the candidate experience is to the overall recruiting process, so what are you doing to help improve that experience? One way to know whether you’re providing a favorable experience is to walk a mile in the candidate’s shoes.
Source: spukkato / iStock / Getty
How are jobseekers finding your company? How are they applying to your company? What do they have to say about your company on job boards, like Glassdoor and Indeed? Becoming the “candidate” can shed a whole new light on how to recruit them in the future. Fortunately, Clutch—a B2B ratings and reviews firm—has started this process for you!
Clutch’s latest report, How Do People Find Jobs?, highlights which resources jobseekers rely on when seeking out new employment and provides insights into emerging resources, such as social media, in the recruiting process. The report features data from over 500 jobseekers who began a new job within the past 6 months. Key findings are highlighted below.
Newspapers Are Out, Job Boards Are In
It’s 2019. If your company isn’t “with the times,” you run the risk of missing out on top talent who are turning to digital mediums to find employment. Clutch reports that online job boards are the most popular source to find new jobs, as 41% of recent hires say they have successfully found jobs through this resource.
According to Michelle Delgado, Senior Writer and Marketer for Clutch, “Online job boards are popular and likely to attract quality candidates, so they are a good starting point for most businesses.” Clutch finds that 33% of respondents choose to use Indeed or Monster for their online job postings, while 8% use Mediabistro and USAJOBS, among others. If you’re interested in standing out on job boards, Delgado offers the following tips:
- Make sure you’re including detailed job descriptions that contain keywords related to the role;
- Add important details, such as the level of experience you are seeking and the location of the job; and
- Be sure to clarify whether the role is full- or part-time.
“Hiring managers and HR professionals should research similar job listings in their area to determine which phrasing is most commonly used,” says Delgado.
Delgado adds, “Companies that want to hire new employees should be present where job seekers are looking … If an online job board doesn’t yield the right candidates, companies may have to expand their search.”
When job boards fail to do the trick, good old-fashioned networking comes into play. According to Clutch, networking is still favored by 25% of respondents, while 14% say they prefer social media, and 5% say they’ve found new jobs via e-mailed newsletters.
Content Marketing for Recruitment
Clutch explains that some examples of e-mail newsletters include industry-specific newsletters that distribute information about job opportunities or newsletters companies publish themselves. We’ve recently discussed the ways recruiters can use a content-marketing strategy to help boost the employment brand. If Clutch’s findings are any indication of what the future has in store, more employers would be wise to adopt this content strategy going forward.
While only 5% of respondents have found their current role via an e-mail newsletter, receiving job “alert” e-mails from career websites/job boards seems to be the “future” of recruiting. With numerous jobs being constantly added to career sites daily, jobseekers prefer to receive relevant job opportunities via e-mail, rather than endlessly scrolling or checking for updates.
According to the Clutch findings, 88% of respondents use automatic job alerts while searching for a new role. More than half (61%) say these alerts are effective, including 21% of people who find them very effective. On the flip side, only 10% of respondents see these notifications as “ineffective.”
Social Media Recruiting Is Gaining in Popularity
According to Clutch’s report, only 14% of respondents have found a new job via social media, but more social media websites are starting to see the opportunities that these online communities have for connecting jobseekers with employers—and it’s not just LinkedIn that’s becoming a resource for jobseekers.
Delgado points to Facebook’s new “jobs” feature, where “[c]ompanies can post their job opportunities on Facebook and promote their listings to users scrolling their newsfeed. Once a candidate applies through Facebook, companies can set up video interviews and even make an offer within the platform.”
However, companies must be aware of the risks involved when posting jobs to social media sites, like Facebook. A recent claim against Facebook shows how employers could be liable for discrimination based on their job ads. In this claim, a group of job hunters performed job searches through Facebook. When they selected advertisements for various positions, they clicked on a standard Facebook disclosure relating to the ads that explained why they received them.
The discriminatory ads in question disclosed that the jobseekers saw them because they were men of a certain age in a certain location. Women in the same area, searching the same variables, would not have received the same advertisements. Lawyers for the jobseekers in the case argue that Facebook, with access to years of users’ data, can target individuals with a high degree of precision to match them with advertisements.
If you’re looking to post your job ads to Facebook, Connor Beatty—an Employment Law Attorney with Brann & Isaacson and Editor of Maine Employment Law Letter—suggests reviewing your job advertising practices and the policies and practices of any third-party websites you use to make sure they aren’t restricting the ads to users of certain ages, genders, or races. Beatty adds that you may also need to be sure that the advertisement will be served to a diverse population. This way you reduce the risk of running into any discriminatory hiring practices.
While traditional hiring methods may still work for your company, new technologies and platforms are increasing in popularity. If your company isn’t adapting to the changing times, you may be left in the dust. By using insights from Clutch’s findings, you will be able to keep up with jobseekers and, in turn, provide them with a good candidate experience. To learn more about this report, click here.